


Necromancer

by Crazyeight



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Necromancy, Other, The Necromancer - Freeform, Why did Sauron have nine fingers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:22:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27841420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyeight/pseuds/Crazyeight
Summary: "He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough,' Gollum had said. But why did he have only nine? A glimpse into the past offers a possibility.
Kudos: 2





	Necromancer

_At last._

The word echoed through his mind as the call went up along the blasted land. From the ruins of a once great fortification he drew himself up, a great, black cloud whose shape stretched forth like great wings and he fell upon the torch-lit quarry below. Misshapen forms, gangly, long-armed and bow-legged – the orcs, the twisted creatures born from a mind and power far greater than he – fell back fearfully with a cry. Lightning sparked within the dark shapelessness he bore as he touched the dead earth. Glowing light gazed outward upon a black sarcophagus, bound with chains and covered with elegant, flowing script.

At long last, he found it.

The black cloud that was his form coiled like a serpent and then flowed out toward the sarcophagus, shaping themselves akin to fingers. They caressed themselves along its hard surface, admiring the craftsmanship even as the words along its surface pained him. Lightning pulsed within him eagerly. The wills of elves long dead still remained within, warding the contents from his touch just as they warded the sarcophagus from time and decay. The last work once great Eregion. He wondered who it might have been. Certainly not Celebrimbor, for he was long dead by the time of the Great Siege; his body becoming a banner for his legions as they ravaged the lands. Many of the ring-smiths had been slain during that bitter conflict, but surely some survived. He, Mairon himself, doubted that those _peasants_ of the woodland realm or even Lothlorien had built this. Not even those of Lindon.

_Certainly not drowned Númenor,_ Mairon thought, withdrawing from the sarcophagus in thought. Well, in the end it didn't matter who had made this. He would find a way to open it eventually, given time. As a maia who once served the ValaAulë. He wondered what his old vessel would look like after all this time. These thousands of years. It was _his._ Made with the power of the One and though It were lost, the things It had invested Its power in remained. No power less than his own could destroy them, and though time would wear on all things, its touch would be as tiny grains of sand of the finest quality, all falling slowly. His vessel would be degraded, that much was for certain. But _preserved._ And as long as it remained so, it could be repaired.

Nothing made by the One could be destroyed while it existed.

Darkness twisted and coiled in a mimicry of a cruel smile. He found himself looking forward to this project, perhaps more so than all the others. For ages, he had shaped and sculpted the forms of elf and man and wolf and orc and so many others and inhabited their bodies with souls of _his_ choosing. The body was a plaything to him. A canvas for him to work his craft upon. The elves saw it as a blasphemy, yet hadn't they tried to slow the wears of time on their _hröa?_ Weren't they even allowed to reincarnate after dying? Slaves. Slaves to the Valar every last one of them. Even those who had rebelled left their existence at the mercies of Mandos and all his ilk.

But not he. He wouldn't be bound by them. Why should he, when he understood the body so well?

No.

Sorcerer. Dark Lord. He had been called these titles before, but he would have a new one to match this triumph. He would show the elves who held the mastery over life and death. A ruler of the dead that went beyond Mandos.

A Necromancer.

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago, while thinking on Gollum's remark on Sauron having only nine fingers despite having built himself a new body, I got to wondering why this was. Mostly, I think this is a sign of Sauron's 'spiritual degradation' (such as when he lost his ability to assume a fair shape and veil his power) but a line about how the preservation of the One Ring ensured that all it made would continue to exist and continue to preserve the foundations of those constructions (as was mentioned about Barad-dur). Rereading the mortal wounding of Sauron at the hands of Gil-Galad and Elendil and how his spirit fled his body when Isildur cut the ring off his hand, I found myself further wondering what happened to the body? There's nothing in the text referencing its disposal and only small bits that say Sauron made himself a new one over the centuries.
> 
> But the body he lost in the War of the Last Alliance was made with the One Ring to replace what was destroyed in Númenor's fall. So perhaps it still existed in some fashion until the One's destruction? Going even further, there was a time where Sauron took on the title of 'the Necromancer' and with Gollum's eyewitness account of him still having nine fingers, I began to theorycraft from there that perhaps Sauron found a way to repair and reinhabit his old body. Sauron has a long, long history of tinkering with the bodies of the living and the dead. Of course, this idea has no support for it, but for me it made Sauron a little creepier.


End file.
